I came to this from carpentry, not from plants
I went to vocational school for carpentry. Then I spent my early twenties restoring hotels. Long hours, tight deadlines, and somebody checking the work every day. That's where the work ethic came from.
Before that, my parents ran their own business. Custom drapery and posters, and they sold chair cushions at trade shows on the weekends. My parents owned their own business. That's where I learned what it takes to survive.
We moved almost every year, up and down through upstate New York and Massachusetts. Plymouth for a stretch. Summers I was baling hay. It was not a soft childhood, and I'm not going to pretend it was.
Northampton is where it started
I moved back to Massachusetts for a girl who was going to UMass, whom I ended up marrying. Ended up in an apartment in Northampton and needed work, so I took a landscaping job.
They put me on the hardscape crew. I learned everything I could about it. Base depths, drainage behind walls, how a wall fails and why it fails. That was the part of landscaping that felt like the carpentry I already knew, which is to say it was building something that either holds or it doesn't.
A few years in, I hit the ceiling on what they were going to pay me. So I told my boss I was going out on my own, and I told him I'd never compete with him or take his clients.
I never did. We're still friendly.
That was 2007 when I founded Beyond Landscaping.
Why I care so much about what's underneath
Most people come to this trade through plants. I came to it through framing and finish work, and it changes what I worry about.
When I look at a patio project, I'm looking at what's under it. Eight to ten inches of dense grade stone, set by the soil condition rather than by a spec sheet. Not four inches. When I look at a retaining wall, I'm looking at the drainage behind it, and whether somebody rocked the exposed end or just left a saw cut sitting there.
Those are carpentry instincts pointed at stone. The finish matters, and the thing behind the finish matters more, because you only get to build it once.
I still design every project myself. There's no designer on staff and no horticulturist either. I sub out the work I'm not licensed for, and I'll tell you exactly which parts those are.
What we own, and why it's on your estimate
Full fleet, including our own excavator. Nothing rented, nothing sitting in a delivery window while your yard is open.
The piece I'd point at is the hydraulic grapple. It rotates a full 360 degrees, which means we set a two-ton boulder exactly where the drawing put it instead of near enough. The same attachment lifts a large tree, digs the hole, and places the tree in one motion. I don't think a lot of companies around here have one.
Equipment is also why we have a minimum. Any day heavy machinery is on your property, that's $2,500 before anybody has moved a stone. Design-build projects start around $5,000 for that reason. It's arithmetic, not attitude.
The jobs I say no to
I turned down a project worth around $200,000. It was a hundred feet of slope that ended at a swamp, and there was no way to get equipment in and out without sinking it. I could have taken a deposit and figured it out later. Instead, I told them in the driveway.
There's a standing list of things we don't do at all. We sub out irrigation, lawn fertilization, large tree removal, gutter cleaning, and carpentry. The carpenter works right alongside my crew, but he isn't us, and I'm not going to say he is.
I don't hold a pesticide or herbicide license, so we don't spray. We don't hydroseed because we don't own the equipment. We don't touch wetlands or Conservation Commission permitting.
You should find that out here rather than three weeks into a job.
How you'll actually work with us
A design is $1,200, and it comes off the project if you build it. You get a 3D rendering. On something large, we'll meet two or three times across three or four weeks before anybody digs.
The office picks up first. After that, it generally ends up being me, which is either the best or the worst thing about hiring a company this size depending on how you feel about it.
Everything we plant and everything we build carries a one-year warranty. We close every project with a walkthrough, and if something isn't right at that walkthrough, we're not finished.
Small jobs are scheduled four to six weeks out. Larger builds run longer, and on new construction we're often waiting on other trades before we can start.
The shop
83 State Road in Whately, which is about as close to South Deerfield as it is to anywhere. We built the facility for this work rather than moving into somebody else's building.
Design-build travels from here. Northampton, Hadley, Amherst, Williamsburg, Deerfield, Easthampton, Belchertown, Conway, Goshen, and out to the Berkshires or Lenox when a project is big enough to justify moving the equipment.
Property care and Total Quality Care stay within about ten miles. Northampton, Hadley, Amherst, South Deerfield, and Deerfield. Snow removal is offered in Northampton and South Deerfield only, and that's the whole list.